Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-40.djvu/524

506 "I do not."

"Do you not guess it?"

"No!" I answered, crossly. "Not unless you wanted to annoy us."

"And I did. I wanted to annoy you."

I laid down my embroidery. "Annoy me! What satisfaction could that give you?"

"I hate a slave!" he exclaimed, walking the room, "and you are one, Janet Abercrombie. A born slave! You had no thought in life but Juliet. She filled up your horizon; and I was tired of it. I wanted you to see her as she is,—a pretty, self-willed woman, who seems to yield so that she may govern. There was nothing too exacting for her to ask, nothing too precious for you to grant; and it was not wholesome for either of you."

"You are very impertinent."

"But one cannot change nature, I suppose, and you have it in you to submit. Years ago, when I was a very young fellow, it used to irritate me to see how absorbed you were in Ogden Dalton. He was superbly handsome, but that was all there was of him! You were porcelain to his crude clay."

"Duncan Macfarlane," I cried, "leave Ogden alone! What he was, what I was to him, certainly does not concern you, and I will not bear it."

"Still, you were a slave to him, and, because of him, to Lilian," he repeated.

I was so furious that I could not answer.

"You think that your idols all have feet of brass," he said. "Suffer me to show you that they are clay."

For answer I stood up, meaning to leave him, but he came in front of me.

"Oh, I am not nearly through," he said. "I have a great deal to say yet! Do you not know why I wanted Juliet to disturb your calm and show you how shallow your foundations for happiness were?"

"No," I replied; "I haven't the slightest idea. Perhaps you wanted to oust Bernard and marry her yourself."

He laughed at this.

"No," he said. "But I did want to marry you."

"Duncan," said I, "will you let me go up-stairs?"

"It is not time for you to go, and it is not polite to leave me. I still want to marry you, Janet."

By this time I was so excited that I sat down and cried, and he stood still and watched me, and I hated him for it. Presently he came to me, and drew a chair close to me, and took my hand in his, and would not let me draw it away.

"You do not believe me, but I love you dearly, Janet."

"Love me!"

"Yes, love you. Why should not a man love you?"

I laughed. I could not help it, being so nervous and wrought up.

"They never have," said I.

"You have never allowed it. T have seen men try to make love to